The development of clean, efficient, and renewable forms of energy is a critical scientific challenge. Plants have already figured out how to do this via photosynthesis. Can we develop a process that mimics this?

Coffee has more to offer your brain than just yawn-free days! Transform your everyday experience with coffee and its stains to an understanding of the interesting phenomenon of coffee ring effect. Explore its implications and challenges in materials industry and learn about a simple approach to get rid of it.

There are lots of ways to use sunlight to achieve sustainable energy goals. Photocatalysts, which can use sunlight to power useful chemical reactions, are of great interest for the production of solar fuels like hydrogen. Read more about how we can use novel nanomaterials as photocatalysts in this Chembite!

In today’s Chembite we appreciate and explore some remarkable mechanistic aspects of the hydrogenation of CO at a nickel surface. The paper covered gives the first account of catalytic methanol and formaldehyde production from CO by Ni. But to explain why we need to go deeper than the surface…

This work shows that bicarbonate (HCO3-) is neither a general acid nor a reaction partner in the rate-limiting step of electrochemical CO2 reduction catalysis mediated by planar polycrystalline Au surfaces. Kinetic modeling studies and electrochemical experiments suggest that it acts as a proton donor in steps past the rate-limiting one and a buffer in the solution.

How is chemistry explaining the origin of life?
The authors of this paper, look into the formation of DNA building block (2-deoxy-D-ribose) from molecules that were present on Earth at its early stages.

Chemists are finding new ways to create fuels from species that are otherwise harmful to our environment! This article looks into how we study these processes and what can be learned about the details of the chemistry.

Title: Electrocatalytic Radical Dichlorination of Alkenes with Nucleophilic Chlorine Sources Authors: Niankai Fu, Gregory S. Sauer, and Song Lin Journal: Journal of the American Chemical Society http://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.7b09388 Year: 2017 The unsaturated bond of an alkene is one of the most exploited functionalities inside the organic chemist’s…

Methane is a molecule in our atmosphere that is contributing to climate change. This research looks at Arctic methane emissions through the use of a model and measurements to allow for a more complete understanding of the global distribution.

Ever wondered how and why the world of ‘nanomaterials’ is fueling the ‘big’ technological advances! Let us travel past the layers of sophisticated ingenious performance of nanomaterials and learn the fundamental reason behind their properties.

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) already bring cheap and versatile lighting to people across the world, but the latest technological advances are even more promising, embedding nanocrystals in a perovskite matrix for better LEDs.